


everything to win

by mascott (ladyfriday)



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, F/M, Marriage Contracts, Modern Royalty, Sharing a Bed, Strangers to Lovers, romance novel tropes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 00:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17192717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyfriday/pseuds/mascott
Summary: He needs money and she needs a husband.It’s really that simple.(Written for a Secret Santa fic exchange, author to be revealed soon.)





	everything to win

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hooksandheroics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hooksandheroics/gifts).



> Brevity is the soul of wit, so clearly I have none. 
> 
> Written for Jazz, a lover of bed sharing and domesticity. Hope you like it! 
> 
> Major thanks to [to be revealed] for your eyeballs on this!!!
> 
> Title from Everything to Win by Derek Klena (Anastasia OBC Soundtrack)

He needs money and she needs a husband.

It’s really that simple.

 

 

The rattling piece of crap Scott had haggled down to twelve hundred dollars starts wheezing just as he ducks out of Moose Jaw. The hinges creak, the passenger side window won’t open and the driver’s side window refuses to close. Autumn is shrivelling into winter, and in the mornings, when he’s zipping across the barren Trans-Canada highway, his face, his fingers will be bloodless and numb. His nose runs like a faucet, as red as Rudolph’s, his sinuses swollen for long enough that it’s easier to breathe through his mouth by default.

He floors the gas and the engine sputters, metallic and sickly, but it chugs on and so Scott pushes. He hops the border to Manitoba and it protests, but it doesn’t give in. And Scott had only ever obeyed the aggressive; his mom taking away his television rights for a week until he’d learned to keep his room clean, his old Russian coach tearing into him with her savage pointed teeth, until he’d skated clean through. The car won’t punish him, and so he ignores it. He fills it with gas and pats the hood as if it might make it feel a little better. Until the first sign for Winnipeg is within sight, and it just—chokes. Scott barely manages to navigate onto the shoulder of the highway before it rolls to a stop, a finality in its silence.

All things considered, it’s a miracle that it’s lasted this long.

He’d started his trek in Vancouver with his drivers’ license in his pocket and two thousand dollars in cash to his name. An old gym bag stuffed with old tees, most of them with logos on them, spoils from swag bags, tossed haphazardly onto the back seat. It’d slid off the bench seat on the third time he’d jammed his foot into the brake, inches away from the rear bumper of a milk tanker, the round and purple behind emblazoned with a black speckled cartoon cow that’d laughed mockingly down at him.

The money hadn’t lasted long.

Gas had cost a small fortune, and he’d stayed in hotels and then motels, but without a job, he’d hemorrhaged cash. He’d used the back seat of his car for his lodging for all of a week before the creak in his knees and the knots in his back, aches from injuries past had returned with a vengeance. Half a mind away from giving up and crawling back home, tail tucked between his legs, he’d taken a final shot; the last of his cash had bought him a measly pile of chips at a poker game, but he’d cashed out with motel and gas money, with some to spare for a thick, juicy burger and a family pack of hot Cheetos.

His mom had always said he’d been the fastest of his brothers to pick up counting.

So he isn’t worried when he calls for a tow, isn’t offended when the driver of the truck gives his car a look of disgust. He hasn’t a care in the world when the mechanic demands three thousand to fix it, and he ditches it at a chop shop. If he’d managed to haggle a car down to twelve hundred in Vancouver, he can get it down to a grand in Winnipeg. And, he thinks, as he walks away with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his hoodie, he’s got no budget to think of. Money could always be made. He could even splurge and get himself a five-thousand-dollar car. Something with windows that open and close as they should. A remote key, if he’s feeling adventurous.

He’s got his eye on the sweet stack of chips collecting in his pockets, as he wins hand after hand after hand, eyes flitting around the table, mind working furiously. He’s handed a half glass of whiskey after the third hand he wins, as if it might handicap him. It’s golden and smooth on his tongue, a truly fantastic aged maple whiskey, his dad would’ve loved— _and had a heart attack_ —if he’d seen Scott swirling it around his mouth and spitting it back into the glass, all in one gulp.

He could buy his own expensive whiskey with his spoils from this game.

But he’s just made his fourth thousand when a hand grabs him by the back of his neck, squeezing hard enough that he begins to choke, clawing piteously at the man’s knuckles.

“You little rat,” the man snarls, “Thought you were so slick, counting all those cards, huh?”

He’s stripped of every last chip he has and tossed unceremoniously out the door. Shivering from the cold, he spends the last of his hundred-dollar bills on a hotel room for the night, wrapping himself up in a fluffy white robe and falling asleep to SportsCentre.

When night falls again, there isn’t a single game in town that’ll have him.

He knocks on the door of every gambling establishment he knows, and some that he doesn’t. But Winnipeg, for all it’s cosmopolitan excess, has a small town for an underground gambling culture. Word has made its rounds. He could’ve purchased a hundred grand in chips, ordered their most expensive drink and it wouldn’t have mattered. He’s tossed each time by a behemoth of a bouncer, each edition coming in varying degrees of hairy.

In his wallet, he has one measly purple ten-dollar bill left. Enough for four coffees from Tim’s; the only warmth he can afford. And it’s not so cold that he’ll die of hypothermia if he sleeps on a park bench. He might pull this off—find a job at a place that tips well, a bar maybe, save up enough for his next car. The cheapest he can find, less than a grand, if he can manage it. He’ll get his car and then he’ll be out. Onto the next city where his habits with cards haven’t been broadcasted all over town. And onwards.

Carless, jobless, cashless, he wanders the avenues of Winnipeg, crossing streets where the signal turns green, no direction in mind. Somewhere, in a rest stop between Saskatchewan and Manitoba, he’d lost his gloves. They hadn’t been much in the way of warmth; supple leather molded to his fingers like a second skin. They’d gripped his steering wheel like a dream, a barrier between his hands and the icy cold the plastic wheel could get after a night outside. With enough of a stick to them that they wouldn’t slip off on turns.

Useless in the face of minus twenties, but the temperature is barely kissing zero these days. It’s not so cold that he’ll get frostbite without them. But in the night, the northerly winds start up and the wind chill hikes to the minus tens, reddening and cracking his exposed skin. He’ll spend at least some of his ten dollars on a new pair of gloves, he thinks; even if only on a cheap pair of one-size-fits-all from the Dollarama.

On his seventh traffic light—or maybe his ninth or fifteenth—he comes upon a stretch of shops. Storefronts with draped banners, easels folded and propped against the windows on the inside. Punctuated by gabled—houses, he wants to say, but the street lights are ensconced in old wrought iron lantern cages, the light soft and flickering. He can’t tell.

The stretch of sidewalk is quiet and subdued, no lights in windows, but the road runs parallel to Main Street, intersects all the major roads, without the pain of potholes and construction blockades. There’s a rhythmic thrum to the vehicular traffic, local drivers who know their way around the city, but no slow-trudging pedestrians to navigate around. Scott reaches the end of the block and he turns back, eating up sidewalk squares with his stride.

His breath is fogging. Faint wisps, barely enough to notice. But the winter is settling in; he might be able to sleep on a park bench tonight, but it’ll be impossible in a week. He doesn’t even have a sleeping bag to tuck around himself.

He swings around the old-fashioned lamppost, his fingers grazing the wrought iron post, his shoulder knocking into a stranger’s arm, sending her stumbling.

“I’m sorry,” he says, reaching to steady her with his hands at her elbows, but he catches only air as she rights herself with a feline sort of grace.

“Oh, it’s alright,” she says, the words enunciated and careful, her voice not high-pitched by any standards, but it’s almost _shrill_. “No harm, no foul.”

With one last apology, he turns, makes his way back up the street, timing his steps to three per square, counting down his options. He could use his credit card. The interest on that wouldn’t be pretty, but he could pay it off after a couple of card games—if he could get out of Winnipeg on the back of that loan.

Except cards could be tracked, and the next thing he’d know, he’d be joined on this trip by his brothers. Too keep him out of trouble, they’d say. More like annoy him into returning home.

“Hey,” the woman says, and his head snaps up. “Could you maybe not step on the cracks?”

“Huh?” _What cracks?_

“The cracks,” she points to his feet, brown leather boots planted squarely on the seam between two chunks of sidewalk. “Bad things happen when you step on cracks.”

“Okay,” he drawls. But when he falls into step again, it’s keeping time with her footfalls, skipping over the breaks in the pavement.

The Rolex he’s still wearing could fetch him a decent price. He might sell it at a pawn shop, and then come back for it, once he’s got a decent nest egg again. But it might sell before he can buy it back. And there’s no way it’d sell for enough to get him a car.

He reaches the end of the street and with one stumbling step, nearly mows the woman over. She grabs him by the waist before he can take the both of them down, her fingers bunching in the vinyl of his bomber jacket, steadying him. The dim street light casts a shadow across her face, drawing a line diagonally over her lips. Her eyes are dark, her lashes long and wispy. She’s an old Hollywood kind of beautiful, he thinks absently. The line of her nose, the cut of her cheekbones, the curve of her jaw. Gems dangling from her ears sparkle in the streetlight, as something priceless might. She looks like a million bucks.

There’s something so frustratingly familiar about her. Like a word he can’t remember, stuck on the tip of his tongue. _He’s seen her somewhere._

“We run into each other again,” he says, cracking a smile. “Do you need something? Help, maybe?”

She laughs, a belly-deep hysterical cackle. _A husband_ , he swears he hears her say, but that doesn’t seem reasonable—that in this day and age, a woman would _need_ a husband. Not a boyfriend, or a date, but a _husband_. And certainly not someone who looks like her.

She must have men pounding down her door.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that?”

“Nothing,” she says shaking her head. “I’m just thinking. This street is…it’s a good place to think.”

“Isn’t it? It’s a good street to pace.”

“Well,” she steps away from him. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

His Rolex is the last of the valuables he has. He might take it to one of those payday loan places, or a loan shark—there’s got to be a couple of those in a city with a gambling culture. It could work as collateral, get him enough to get out of here. It sits heavy on his wrist anyway, a pain to wear while he drives.

It’s a graduation gift from his father. He can’t give it up.

He can’t give it up, and the only idea he has left is a bus. A one-way ticket on a bus to a different city. Except he’s got to eat, and tickets may be cheap, but a ten-dollar bill won’t take him halfway to the next town, never mind a different city.

He’s got nothing. Absolutely nothing.

“So,” he asks out loud, fishing for a distraction. “What’re you thinking about?”

She nearly jumps, then clears her throat. “You’re talking to me?”

“No,” he huffs, “I’m talking to the other person who’s pacing this street with me. Of course I’m talking to you.”

“Sarcasm isn’t funny,” she sniffs, “And it’s nothing important.”

Silence blankets him once more, Scott can feel his thoughts and his nonexistent options bubbling over inside his head. 

“You want to know what I’m thinking about?” He doesn’t wait for her to answer before he adds, “How I’m going to manage to get out of here.”

“Are you a runaway?” she asks.

“I’m twenty-six years old. It’s not called running away.”

“Okay,” she says skeptically. “If you say so.”

“I am!” he says indignantly, patting down his coat pockets for his wallet. He fishes it out, fumbling with his cards, stuffed two to a slot. When he finally finds his driver’s license, he presents it to her with an impatient flourish. “See?”

She scrutinizes the card, her brows furrowed. The light’s not much to look at it in. He’s half tempted to hold it up to the bulb, let the holographic seal change, just to prove that it’s genuine.

“Don’t say it looks fake,” he warns.

“I wasn’t. I was just going to say…” she wrinkles her nose. “That Scott is a nice name.”

She’s a terrible liar. He rolls his eyes. “What’s yours?”

She hesitates, her head tilted curiously to the side. “Tessa.”

“Oh. Like the princess?” She looks to be around the age Her Royal Highness might be as well, though he supposes, people have tendencies to copy the names of the royal children in the immediate years after their birth. In Charlie’s graduating class, he’d counted eight people named Jordan.

“Right,” she says slowly, “Like the princess.”

When they reach the end of the block, they keep walking, crossing the alleyway and moving onto the next. He regales her with the story of his drive across Canada with nothing but the clothes on his back and the money he could earn on the way. No family help, just him and the trans-Canada highway in a clunker older than him. She fixes him with a look when he complains about getting caught out for counting cards, and he’s nearly sheepish but not quite because—what constitutes fair play? If the other players can’t keep up with him, then they _should_ be penalized by losing their money. It’s how competition works.

“I suppose you’re right,” she shrugs. “If you call your card counting innovation, and the game runners taking your money and throwing you out is punishment, then I suppose as a competition, poker will never grow.”

“You’ve got it,” he cheers, slinging his arm over her shoulder. She freezes, her shoulders going stiff, and apologies start to tumble out of him. How stupid is he, touching a stranger so familiarly, completely inconsiderate of her boundaries. But then she shifts closer, tucking herself neatly into his side. He isn’t touching her skin-to-skin; he can barely feel her warmth through the layers of her wool coat and his bomber, but pressed against him, smelling deliciously of strawberries, she’s _warm_ and he’s comforted. And when she looks up at him, eyes laughing and—gorgeous green now that the light’s hitting them _just so_ , the colour of them somewhere between jade and turquoise, like nothing he’s seen before. He stumbles.

“What do you say we fix up a PowerPoint and go visit some of these poker tables. I’ll give you a cut.”

He sounds like he’s coming down with a cold. Scott has half a mind to deck himself. How had anyone back in Ilderton thought he had game?

“What, seventy-thirty?” she scoffs, “Thirty percent of some arbitrary profit doesn’t seem like a good deal to me.”

“I was thinking more like fifty-fifty. Partners.”

“Partners,” she murmurs. “I like that.”

He clears his throat. “So, partner. What brings you to this neck of the woods on this fine night? I showed you mine…”

She sighs. “Just a meddling old man who isn’t satisfied with the pound of flesh I’ve already given him.”

“Do you need someone to off him?”

“It’s my grandfather,” she says pointedly, “And anyone who’s looking to off him will have a hell of a time. He’s already dead.”

“Oh,” he winces. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’ve mourned him plenty. I’m over it.”

Her father had been excommunicated by her grandparents, and though Tessa’s the youngest of her four siblings, they’d picked her for heir apparent. She’d been a student at the National Ballet School when she’d been promptly summoned back to the family estate. (Explaining the fluidity in the way she moves; he’d had half a mind to ask her if she’d ever ice danced, but for the random woman he’d met on a deserted Winnipeg street to also be a figure skater would’ve been—absurd.) Her siblings had already scattered to their own corners of the world, her mother had just—vanished. And her father, insisting on her grandparents accepting his mistress as his wife-to-be had been banished.

In a month, he’d been removed from anything involving their family coffers and inheritance ledgers.

Tessa had been the only one left. And she hadn’t minded; she’d always wanted to take over someday, though she’d never imagined it would be this way. She’d remained at home and learned the family business, gone off to the university they’d chosen, for the degree they’d decreed.

They’d been proud of her. Tessa had always thought they were proud of her.

But sometime after the death of her grandmother, her grandfather became increasingly impatient with her. He obsessed over everything she did. Her schedule was maintained and monitored by his secretarial staff. Any man she saw had to be vetted and approved before she’d be allowed to date them. He became obsessed with getting Tessa married. They had countless parties, where he’d paraded her around all the eligible men of their ilk and none of them had stuck, but Tessa, long-suffering and eager to please, had tried so hard.

It’d only served to aggravate him. She hadn’t been trying hard enough.

And then he’d just stopped. No more parties, no more questions. He’d roped her into every business conversation he’d had, taught her the correct ways to express her opinion, diplomacy at the hands of masters. She hadn’t thought his worries about her perpetual singledom could’ve ended with the instructions for succession explicitly saying that Tessa couldn’t take over unless she’d gotten married first.

“Jeez,” he grimaces. “That all sounds so…gothic. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, my life’s a regular Austen novel.”

“Can’t you just…find someone to play your husband? Fake it for a bit and then get rid of him.”

“I’ve thought of that, but…” she shakes her head, “Can’t risk it. He’s put in a clause about authenticity. If I fake it badly, I might lose…the entire company. God knows there’s a good dozen people waiting for me to fail.”

“So make it real. Get the papers and the rings. They can’t fight that.”

She shakes her head. “I have so much to lose. If I get into bed with the wrong person, it could wreck everything my family has built. And no one’s going to want to sign a prenup that entitles them to nothing in the event of a divorce. Not when they’ll have to marry _me_.”

He frowns. “Anyone who wants their pound of flesh for nothing shouldn’t get married in the first place.“

She raises her eyebrows. “Know anyone who would agree to that? Sign away their life and all that, for a fat load of nothing but stress?”

He barks out a laugh. “Are you serious? I can think of five people off the top of my head who would kill to be married to someone as beautiful as you.”

She snorts. “Flattery will get you nowhere, my friend.”

“False modesty isn’t attractive either, friend.”

Silence descends between them. He keeps his arm around her shoulders as they walk, their feet falling in time, their breath fogging in unison.

“Say,” she stops, “You need money, right? And I need a husband. This could be a win-win. You stay married to me for a year, I give you a paycheque we agree on ahead of time. In a year, we divorce. I get the family business, you get out back to your road trip. It’ll be…an interlude. A weird phase in both our lives.”

He starts to laugh, but when she doesn’t join in, his laughter dies in throat. If she’s serious—“How much money are we talking?”

He might just have a way out of Winnipeg.

She pulls out her phone and presses it a bunch of times. “Does five hundred grand work for you?”

He chokes on air. “Half a million dollars?!”

“I could make it more, if you give me a couple months. But you’ll get a stipend, for as long as you’re part of my family.”

“Half a million is plenty,” he says, his voice strained. “Maybe you should think about this some more. Are you sure?”

“Of course I am! I’m literally at the end of my rope here. The question is, are you?”

This might be the biggest mistake of his life. But all he’s made in the last half decade are mistakes. What’s another one? It’s not as if he has anything better to do. “Why the hell not?”

“Really?” her eyes get so wide, it’s nearly comical. “Are you serious?”

He lets go of her and walks ahead, running his fingers through his hair in an attempt to ease the nausea tearing through his stomach. The money is—too much, the time is too much. A year married, a year he’ll have to take away from his drive across Canada. And he’s nowhere near in a good enough place to commit to anyone, let alone get married, fake or not.

He should say no.

“I’m in.”

They stare at each other for long beats, palpitations choking him, his stomach roiling. A mistake, a mistake, his brain sings at him, he’s making a goddamn mistake. But Tessa, with her hood down and her curled hair blowing with the northerly wind, her cheeks cold-stung and rosy, is radiant. She offers him a way out and a new adventure.

Scott has never been very good at impulse control.

“One last thing, I guess,” she pulls out her wallet and holds it out to him, thumb pressed to the clear plastic compartment holding her driver’s license. Blue and marked with Trillium flowers for Ontario. “My full name is Tessa Jane McCormick Virtue.”

He pinches his eyes shut. “As in Princess of Canada?”

She waves her fingers at him in the worst rendition of jazz hands he’s ever seen. “That’s me!”

He’d known she’d looked familiar.

_A mistake, a mistake, this is a mistake._

 

 

Tessa’s suite at the Fairmont is the kind of luxury Scott had forgotten out of self-preservation. An actual fireplace, a separate dining room, two bathrooms, one of them with a glassed-in shower _and_ a jacuzzi tub. Multiple, massive flat screen televisions, some kind of wired sound system that plays soft classical music in every room of the suite. Candles, tall, short, scented, plain light up the gleaming, polished mahogany surfaces. There are flower petals scattered across the bed, two bottles of champagne in a silver bucket filled with ice.

(It’s a dangerous kind of luxury. He doesn’t want it.)

Tessa exhales loudly. When she speaks, her voice pitches up, strained. “Oh. Well…thematically appropriate, I suppose.”

He hadn’t fished for an invite, but she’d asked him back to her hotel room, anyway. For the best, she’d said. Her room was much too big for one person, and they’d have to get used to sharing space. And—the sooner they could get word out on the street that Princess Tessa had gone public with her new man, the easier it would be to convince the world of their whirlwind romance. In the morning, she would make a call to her assistant, and discreetly suggest that a handful of favoured media personnel wander around the lobby during brunch hours.

In the afternoon, they would leave for Toronto.

Scott stands under the shower until the near-scalding spray has thawed his freezing joints, and then he lets the water cascade down his shoulders, the heavy spray easing the kinks from his back. It’s the same water he’d had in his room at the Best Western the previous night, but it rejuvenates him. As if he’s showered in riches, and he’ll never have to worry about a place to sleep another night of his life. By the time he’s finished, the mirrors are all fogged, the tiles on the floor, the walls have a damp sheen to them.

He steps out with a thick white towel slung around his neck, catching the water dripping from his overgrown hair. With the back of his hand, he wipes the condensation off the mirror, grimacing at his reflection, marred by water streaks. A week’s worth of stubble has grown in on his upper lip in wispy patches, dark baby hairs curling around his mouth. His hair is matted down in the wrong places, flipping at the ends like he’s stepped off of a seventies music video.

He isn’t prince material. He’d barely belonged at his parents’ country club. His shirts had never been the right size, his shorts too comfortable to be fashionable. Scott hadn’t cared. He’d worn Sperrys without socks, recycled his one navy blazer until the arm had started to separate from the rest of the jacket. His mother had bought him polos and khakis, jeans that were so new, it hurt to wear them. All the kind of clothes he’d once bought for himself. No more; he wears team Canada merchandise, or Leafs merchandise, or skate Canada merchandise. As a rule: no t-shirts he’s had to pay for.

In the second vanity drawer, he finds a plastic packaged razor, but no shaving cream. Set neatly to the side of the other sink is a medium-sized bottle of cleanser. Squinting at the label, he reads _rinses skin without over-drying_ , and he’s faintly certain his skin runs on the dry side, a by-product of years spent day-in day-out in freezing cold temperatures. But it’ll do in a pinch.

“Hey, do you mind if I use your foaming cleanser?”

“Help yourself,” she calls back, her voice muffled by the closed door.

Hair still wet and curling, face stinging faintly, but sorry excuse of a mustache gone, he rummages through the pile of clothes he’d grabbed out of his duffle. All old, most of them unwashed for a week and a half. Nothing a prince would wear, he imagines, and it doesn’t matter. He’s not royalty, he’d never asked to be more than small town boy, Scott Moir.

But there isn’t a thing in his crumpled pile of clothes that he wants to wear.

It doesn’t matter. It’s a business deal; he doesn’t have to do anything but show up and sign papers. Scott balls up the t-shirt in his hands and tosses it on the ground. _This is a mistake._ He’s not cut out for—he’s seen her hotel room, the dresses hanging in garment bags in the closet. The luggage stamped with the Louis Vuitton logo. He doesn’t fit.

Scott walks out in black cotton boxer briefs covered up by a fluffy white robe, monogrammed with the Fairmont’s logo.

Tessa’s wearing a diamond ring. A behemoth of a rock, covering the fourth finger of her left hand nearly to her knuckle. She sits on the couch in the sitting area, legs crossed elegantly, the shiny fabric of her green skirt draped neatly over her knees. The ring glints as she turns the page of the leather-bound book resting in her lap, burning spots into his vision.

“I’m ordering room service. What do you want?”

 _He can’t do this._ “Hey, Tessa, listen—”

“I’ll have the grilled chicken with the mashed potatoes. Order something. You should at least get a decent meal out of this whole mess.”

She looks up, a hint of a smile playing with her lips. “It’s hitting you, isn’t it? How crazy this whole thing is?”

He winces. “I just don’t think I’m the right kind of person for this. What would your family say?”

“My whole life…I’ve been working towards this one goal, you know? Taking over as governor general once my grandfather stepped down. I gave up…” she closes her eyes, shakes her head lightly. When she opens her eyes again, there’s an eerie calm about her.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to hold you to a verbal agreement. I need to get married, but that’s not your problem.”

“Why me? You could literally have anyone in the world…why’d you ask me, of all people? I’m—practically homeless, my shoes are ratty, my bag is so old, it’s a miracle it hasn’t fallen apart yet.”

“You were there. You needed money. I don’t trust much—but I do trust that.”

“That’s it?” he asks incredulously, “This is marriage, Tessa. Not a game, it’s two people turning separate lives into one, it’s a commitment, it’s bigger than some clause in an old man’s will.”

“It’s not real!” she says, her voice biting with exasperation. “It’s not two people melding their lives together, it’s not till death do us part. This is a business transaction. It’s going to be a business transaction, no matter who I do this with.”

She exhales in a ragged breath. “Scott, I’m running out of time. The vote on bill C-105 is in two weeks, and unless I find a way to meet my grandfather’s conditions and become the governor general, that bill _will_ pass. And I can’t let that happen.”

“Bill C-105?”

“They want to extend the mandated maternity leave to a year and a half. And they’re going to take it out of childcare funding, to balance the books. It’s—the opposition is even voting for this, there’s no way it’s not going to pass.”

“And you’re willing to just sacrifice your own happiness with someone who loves you for the sake of politics? It’s not even war, it’s just… _maternity leave_.”

She shakes her head. “You won’t get it. This is my entire life. My marriage, my…outside life stopped mattering the second I finished college. A marriage for love is never going to happen for me. So why shouldn’t it be like this?”

He sinks onto the couch, his forehead braced on his hands. “I was raised to believe that marriage means something.”

“How lucky for you.” She points to the cross on his necklace with a nod of her head. “You probably went to church too, huh?”

Every Sunday, without fail. Through muscle spasms and bone chips and aching knees. Through medals that were never the colour he wanted, through his friends calling him a foregone conclusion and dropping him from plans without asking. Through missed birthdays to the tune of his angry Russian coach berating him for not getting anything right, ever.

He’d grown up under a roof built by a loving marriage, in a house his father had designed himself. He’d stood by his brothers as they’d gotten married. His parents had each other to rely on, his brothers had their wives with whom they’d built homes, his friends, his cousins, everyone he’d ever known had partners. Through the good and the bad, through unemployment and unexpected bonuses.

And Scott had had Jessica, who’d loved him with he furious intensity of a high schooler, who’d ran back to her skating partner with the indecision of high schooler. He’d had Cassandra who’d loved the success and the podiums and the free sponsored cars, but not the being left off the team. He’d had Diane who’d loved the partying and the drinking, but not the bloodshot eyes and the vomiting himself hoarse that’d come afterward.

Scott had lived—exactly as he’d been supposed to. He’d attended every Ilderton festival, he’d volunteered at the rink, even when it’d hurt to so much as see a sheet of ice. He’d grilled burgers in the summer with his brothers barking orders at him, beer turning piss-warm from the heat of barbeque. He’d played pick up hockey in a beer league, he’d been just one of the guys, he’d been _that guy_. He’d been that small town boy, he’d had that picket fence. He’d done everything right.

Fat lot of good it’d done him.

“I’ll do it,” he says softly. “But I want steak for dinner. And maybe some better clothes.”

“Okay,” she says slowly, “But Scott, you can’t change your mind again. If you won’t do it, I’ll need to find someone who will.”

“I won’t,” he says resolutely. “You’re right. I do need the money. You can trust that I need the money, and I won’t back out. I promise.”

A business partner is still a partner.

He walks over to where she’s sitting, and for a breath, he freezes. Perhaps he should get down on one knee, but that’s—too real, maybe, and this isn’t that. Carefully, he sits across from her on the coffee table, easing himself onto it, relaxing when it doesn’t so much as creak under his weight. He holds his hand out for her to shake. “Partners?”

She curls her fingers around his palm. “Partners.”

(He slips the cross off his necklace.)

 

 

He’s fine with the couch, but the bed is king-sized and she offers him a side, calling him her guest and insisting. He hesitates before agreeing, hesitates again before sitting on the plush mattress. He rummages through his bags until he finds the cleanest pair of sweatpants he has, pulls on a tee shirt, then his old Skate Canada fleece. For good measure, he zips it to his neck.

He hasn’t even climbed under the covers, and he’s already sweating. 

Tessa emerges from the bathroom, pale and rosy-cheeked, freckles dotting her nose and cheeks, and he nearly swallows his tongue. Without the makeup colouring her face, she looks—young, almost. Not childish as he’d looked twelve years old at sixteen, but the glamour of her dress stripped away, her hair piled in a bird’s nest atop her head, dark smudges under her eyes from fatigue, she’s. Still the unattainable princess, his—employer, and completely off limits, but there is just something about this her that makes him want to pile on another layer. Add another barrier.

She’s wearing a gigantic navy onesie, printed with bright pink flamingos.

“It’s comfortable,” she says defensively, tugging her sleeves over her knuckles.

Layers and barriers; maybe she’d had the same idea.

They shut the lights off, but the glow from her cellphone remains. She lies on her side, extra pillows tossed onto the space between them, another barrier. The pattern of the LED glow changes as she flips from screen to screen, and he wonders how her mind can rest if she spends the minutes leading up to sleep, on her phone. But it’s—such a spouse-like thing to ask, he can just imagine his sisters-in-law nagging his brothers to _just sleep dammit, the world won’t end if you’re not on Facebook for a half hour before bed_.

It’s a partner thing to say, and they may be partners, but it’s business—another barrier between them, one he’ll impose. He shuts his eyes and lets the day’s exhaustion lull him to sleep.

Sometime later, Scott jolts awake, heart racing, to the bed being jostled. Tessa turns to her right, yanking the sheets and blankets to her side, then she flops onto her back, making the pillows bounce. A moment later, she turns onto her right side, facing him, pillow pulled diagonally across her head.

“Tessa?” he whispers into the dark. “You awake?”

She whimpers in response.

He rolls on his side and when she turns onto her stomach, the mattress springs shifting as she moves, he squeezes his eyes shut and wills himself to ignore it. In the end, it isn’t hard; the months of travel have him perpetually exhausted. Sleep comes easily.

He jerks awake every hour, and by the fourth time he wakes, he’s so tired, he might cry.

He’s lying on his back, eyes half closed as the sun starts to rise, rays peeking through the gaps in the suite’s blackout shades.

It’s the worst night’s sleep he’s ever had.

 

 

Toronto on the arm of Princess Tessa is Toronto as he’s never seen it.

They fly into Billy Bishop on a private plane, and he’s offered a list of every beer in the world, it feels like. The flight attendant repeats Molson in a stutter, when he orders, wide-eyed and confused, as if no one had ever thought to order Canadian beer on a jet owned by the Canadian royal family. Tessa asks for a glass of _Patrick’s wine_ , and he bows low, before beating a hasty exit to the bar.

He’s not sure Tessa notices the gesture; she stares out the window, chin resting in her hand, a million miles away for the duration of the flight.

There’s a black town car waiting for them on the tarmac when they land and he’s about to start down the steps when she calls him back.

“Do you think you can help me down the stairs? Hold my left hand, make sure my ring’s visible? There’ll be photographers here.”

They’d returned from breakfast earlier that day to an extra three sets of luggage in her room, complete with suits and an honest-to-god Burberry tuxedo hanging in a garment bag. A woman had waited for them at the door, suitcase of equipment in hand. Kelly, the royal hairstylist, she’d introduced herself, and had promptly attacked his hair with a pair of scissors, until his overgrown, unruly mop had been tamed into a cut short enough to constitute groomed, but long enough to not be utilitarian. Entirely impractical; his hair would grow out in a week, but Tessa had taken one look at him and murmured _yes_ under her breath, and—she would be footing his hair bill from then on, so if she preferred this, then who was he to complain?

(He would spring for the bill himself, if it promised to put that look on her face again, eyes dark and admiring, bottom lip trapped between her teeth. He’d pay it gladly, in exchange for _yes_ in that tone, low and husky. A hundred dollars is insignificant for how _good_ it feels to be appreciated.)

It’d looked good. _He’d_ looked good. A great deal better than he had the last time he’d bathed in this suite. But then he’d gotten out of the shower and just—stared dumbly at his clothing choices, at the countless shirts and pants and belts and dress socks. At a loss for what to pair.

In the end, it hadn’t mattered.

A sharp rap at the door and Tessa had said, “Go with the navy collared shirt and the grey khakis.”

They had fit perfectly, and for the first time since Vancouver, his Rolex had looked at home on his wrist. When he’d walked out of the Fairmont with Tessa, it hadn’t been to sidelong looks, wondering why someone like him was escorting her. It was just clothes, but the picture had worked.

It still does, he thinks, looking at Tessa in her black dress and navy heels, not nauseatingly matching, but complementing. He shrugs off his wool coat and drapes it over her bare shoulders. She has her own trench coat, folded neatly on one of the couches inside the plane, but. This picture works better, he thinks.

She smiles gratefully, her eyes bright and shining, and yeah. This picture works infinitely better.

The sun is shining, and the wind is brisk. He’d rolled his shirtsleeves up and his forearms are exposed to the elements as he steps carefully down the stairs, angling his body to keep Tessa in sight. Her heels are high and the metal rungs are steep. She misjudges a step and stumbles, her sole catching air. He steadies her this time, with a hand on her waist, and she whispers a _thank you_. Her voice low and raspy, and he has goosebumps from the cold, but the flush creeping up his neck, this sudden warmth everywhere is _something else_.

When they’ve gotten their feet planted solidly on the ground, she shifts their hands so that their fingers are entwined, and the sun is in his eyes, but he feels her smile up him anyway.

A man in a black suit announces, “We’ve got time for three questions, so if you have one—”

The hoard of reporters rushes forward, microphones shoved at Tessa’s face, their voices overlapping as they shout the same question over and again. _Princess, are you getting married?_

“Your highness, what brings you to Toronto?” Is the first question he hears that isn’t about the rock on her finger, and Tessa smiles brilliantly.

“We’re here to see my good friend Jeff Buttle in Dear Evan Hansen for it’s first night at the Royal Alexandra. We’re so proud of him and the work he’s done with this show and this character.”

Another question, a higher pitched female voice calls, “Princess, who is this man? Is he your date?”

She snakes her arm around his waist, tucking herself into his side. He wraps his arm around her shoulders, pulling her tighter against him, leaning his head against hers.

“Yeah, Tess,” he says, grinning down at her. “ _Am_ I your date?”

The hand at his waist grips his shirt tighter, her shoulders stiffen almost imperceptibly. Still, Tessa beams into the camera lenses pointed at their faces. “I guess you could call him that.”

“Princess, are you in a relationship with this man?”

“I believe,” she says softly, her voice pitching low, bringing the reporters closer. “We’ve already answered that question.”

 _She’s good._ Incredible at working this crowd, polite and charming and answering their questions while keeping them hanging. It’s a fascinating thing to watch, the back and forth between her and the reporters, each answer loaded and spawning even more questions. They’re inexplicably curious about him—he’s not royal, and Tessa is very clearly the interesting one—but Tessa doesn’t give them a single straight answer, and curious they remain.

They leave, arms still wrapped around each other, as they’d walked that first night they’d met. Tessa waves back to the crowd with her left hand, her ring catching the sun and wordlessly spawning another fifty questions.

“You’re a natural,” she says, when they’re safely ensconced in the town car. “Are you media trained?”

He hesitates. His past is—far enough away, that it shouldn’t matter. It can’t matter anymore. He’d boxed it up when he’d washed out and all the lessons he’d been given about talking to the press had become useless, like all the other skills he’d cultivated. His heart drums against his ribcage, he feels every beat, hears it over the white noise of the cars passing by.

“Nah, I’m just an okay speaker, I guess. I don’t hate it, if that’s what you’re asking.” It’s no small blessing that she doesn’t know him well enough to feel his tremors.

She sighs in relief. “This is going to be a lot easier than I’d anticipated.”

There’s a navy suit hanging in the closet for him already when they pull up at the Fairmont Royal York, across from Union station, blocks away from the harbour. It’s not a perfect match to the lacy blue dress hanging next to it, but like everything else in his new wardrobe, it fits. Staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, crisp white dress shirt tucked into tailored suit pants held up by Italian leather, hair neatly unkempt and brushed back, he’s a stranger.

He’s not that poor Moir boy, mooching off his family. He’s no longer an aimless wanderer, trying to find something that in his nightmares, doesn’t exist.

Scott Moir, ceremonial prince-to-be walks with his hand resting on the curve of Princess Tessa’s waist, smiling absently while his eyes don’t leave her. It’s for the photos; she’s paying him for what must pass for a believable romance, and so he doesn’t take his eyes off her. Hair hanging straight and sleek, spilling down her back and over her bare arms, her long legs made longer by her skinny heeled shoes. Looking at her, pretending to be enthralled by her is the easiest job in the world.

Reporters wait for them outside the theatre, they pose for pictures and answer no questions, and when her arm slung across his hips drifts a little lower, feels a little more familiar, he pulls her tighter against him, closer, maybe a little—possessive.  He doesn’t know how the pictures will turn out, but he can feel the eyes of an entire nation start to turn his way, and it feels _good_.

So fucking good.

(The lights dim and Evan Hansen falls from his tree, and when Jeff tells him that he would be found, Scott wishes he could believe him.)

They slip out during the encore, Tessa reaching for his hand and twining their fingers for the benefit of the wide-eyed stares of the people they pass. No cameras allowed, but there’s nothing quite like illicit, grainy cellphone shots to fuel rumours. Or so Tessa had said, and she’s the boss, so along he goes, following her through a side door.

_She’s been here before._

There’s an ease to the way she navigates the maze that is the backstage area, a familiarity to the nods in her direction from the stage crew, wrapping up for the night. They pass rows of dressing room doors, some marked with the names of the actors, others marked for the ensemble. She stops at the door marked with Jeff Buttle’s name, neatly opens the door and promptly starts rummaging around the jars lined up across the mirror.

“God, I’m starving,” she says, dumping a handful of fun-sized candy bars on the dressing table, and tearing through the wrappers.

They’d had a late lunch on a pub’s heated patio, accompanied by live acoustic guitar drifting out from inside the restaurant. He’d torn through a burger while she’d picked at her salad, staring studiously away from the pile of fries on his plate, and when he’d offered them to her, she’d visibly flinched.

“I can’t,” she’d said, “Not in public.”

She’d wanted burgers and fries, but reporters would be digging through receipts and talking to the serving staff, cataloguing everything she’d eaten and everything she hadn’t. The last thing she needs is an announcement in Hello! Canada, proclaiming her to be pregnant, confirmed by a shot of her stuffing her face with deep fried potatoes, drenched in truffle oil and parmesan.

Now, in the safety of—Jeff Buttle’s dressing room (if his sister-in-law could see him now), she makes quick work of a half-dozen chocolate bars, ripping the plastic off while she chews, her next bite ready before she’s even swallowed. The wrappers are tossed haphazardly into a pile, somehow all of them managing to land in a neat little cordoned off area on the table, and Scott is struck with this odd sense that he’s seen this before.

And then he remembers; _Cinderella_.

“You only want me for my chocolate stash,” gripes Jeff from the doorway, arms crossed and grin splitting his face.

“Can you blame me? You always have the good stuff.”

She’s still chewing when she pushes past him and wraps Jeff in a hug. They sway from side to side, murmuring to each other, voices too low for him to make out what they’re saying. Scott looks their way, and it’s an intrusion. His eyes blindly scan the room, landing on the bookshelf, where he’s greeted with a photo of Jeff with Tessa, her face devoid of makeup, freckles left free and exposed. She wears a knitted red dress that leaves her shoulders exposed. No jewelry, no glamour; she shines.

The Tessa in that picture, the woman hugging her friend isn’t the woman he’s being paid to marry.

He’s marrying the crown and only the crown, and it’s better that it’s a symbol he’s tying himself to and not a person. It’s for the best. Glamour and jewelry are hard to let go of, but can be eventually forgotten. People—they stay. And this is a singular year of Scott’s life, no more, no less.

It’s _easier_ , that the woman he knows is the crown.

Tessa pulls away from Jeff, her hands clutching his shoulders. “I know this is your big night, and I don’t want to steal your thunder, but I have…some news.”

She walks back to Scott, and tucks herself under the crook of his left shoulder. By instinct, or necessity, or his brain translating his new job into this kind of reflex, his arm automatically goes around her waist, his fingers brushing her bare skin. She tugs him forward, closer to Jeff, and holds out her left hand. Even in the dressing room’s soft mood lighting, the rock glints obnoxiously.

“I’m getting married.”

Jeff bursts into laughter, his mirth dry and carrying, and Scott’s face is aflame. He’s not anything special, he knows that, he’s certainly not the kind of man a bona-fide princess is meant to marry. If she hadn’t been trolling the streets, looking for a solution that he’d been able to provide, if they’d just—met in a coffee line, or at a gym, under mundane circumstances, she wouldn’t have spared him a first glance, let alone a second. Let alone stopped to talk to him. He knows this.

It still stings.

“That’s your mother’s ring,” Jeff says eventually. “You’re jumping into this with that kind of bad juju hanging over you?”

“I’m moving onto the next phase in my life, Jeff. It’s past time.” She tilts her head, the top of her head resting against the side of his jaw. The mellow, sweet scent of her strawberry shampoo wafts up his nose, he resists the urge to close his eyes and inhale. “Be happy for me?”

There’s a pause, a stifling sort of silence. Jeff stares at them, at Tessa and then back at him, examining every stitch he’s wearing, the placement of his hand, the movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallows nervously. This means something, he thinks. Jeff means something to Tessa, and his believing in this ruse is important to her.

Scott has a job to do.

“Always,” Jeff sighs finally, holding out a hand for him to shake. “Jeff Buttle. I’m this one’s oldest friend. And the love of her life.”

“Scott Moir,” he says, taking his hand and giving it a firm squeeze. _Please believe me when I pretend I’m in love with her_ , he wills his handshake to convey. “I think I can give you a run for your money, on that last one.”

“Now, boys,” Tessa sing-songs playfully. “There’s more than enough of me to go around.”

Jeff cracks a smile at that and Scott is left with a warm feeling in his chest, like he’s passed some sort of test. Tessa squeezes his hip lightly, and when he turns his head to face her, she’s right there, leaning up, lips nearly brushing the shell of his ear. _Thank you_ , she tells him, her voice that same low and raspy, and his mouth goes dry.

Jeff pushes past them, rolling his eyes. “Get a room, you two. Preferably not one with my name on the door.”

If he can convince Jeff Buttle, award winning stage actor Jeff Buttle to believe he’s smitten, then maybe his coaches had been wrong. Perhaps he really does have some modicum of acting talent.

(It’s certainly not the only time they’d been horribly wrong.)

 

 

The investors group throws the cast of Dear Evan Hansen a party in the Four Seasons’ ballroom that night, and where Tessa goes, he follows. Hand at her waist and a smile painted on his face, he snags hors d’oeuvres from penguin suited servers wandering around with silver trays hefted over their shoulders.

He grabs an extra mac and cheese boat and hands it to Tessa, whispering conspiratorially, “It’s okay for you to eat, no one’s looking.”

It’s a bold-faced lie and they both know it. Everyone in attendance stares at them, as if they’re an exhibit at the zoo, and he should be claustrophobic or nauseous or nervous at least, but his heart beats steadily, he smiles easily. Scott Moir thrives when he has a role to play.

He’d forgotten that.

Tessa laughs and takes the proffered paper boat with it’s matching wooden spoon and delicately shovels the contents into her mouth. He takes the empty wrappings afterward, tucking hers beneath his.

“Now no one will know.”

“They’ll think you’re the glutton,” she sighs, “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t normally be like this, it’s just—as soon as some magazine suggests that I’m pregnant, the legitimacy of our marriage starts to be questioned, and then before we know it, it’s all invalidated, and I’m worse off than I was when we started.”

He pats his stomach, still flat, still trim, but no longer as defined as he’d been in the peak of his competitive days. “They already think I’m a glutton. I’m good to take one for the team.”

“I keep having to say this,” she steps into his space, placing a hand on his sternum. Her eyes are the most vivid shade of green. He’s never seen anything quite like it. “Thank you.”

She runs her thumb along the line of his jaw, and Scott’s chest is tight as he holds his breath, tensing as she inches closer. He curls his fingers in the fabric at her waist to keep her from noticing the way his hands tremble. This close, he can count the freckles peeking out from under the layers of her makeup, he can smell her, sweet but not cloyingly so. Her lips, pouty and pink. He wonders what they taste like.

They’re _so_ soft where she presses them to his cheek, inches from his mouth. When she pulls back, she’s looking at the place where she’d kissed him. Slowly, she rubs the pad of her thumb over the spot, her finger coming away smudged pink.

It’s completely platonic, as innocent as innocent might be between two adults, and Scott is lightheaded.

“Don’t worry,” she murmurs, her voice low and intimate, her words meant only for his ears. “I won’t kiss you. That’s a line I won’t cross.”

His eyes flit to her lips, quirked in a half smile. There’d been an iridescent sheen to them—moments ago, he remembers. Rubbed away when she’d kissed his cheek, maybe. Stamped on him like a brand, he can still feel the imprint of her mouth against his skin.

She’s the kind of beautiful he’s never seen. It’s the symmetry in her features, her delicate bone structure. It’s the way the greens and blues in her eyes mix according to her moods, her clothes, the light, a gut punch every time she meets his gaze. He’s never prepared.

It’s the freckles dusting her shoulders, trickling down her sternum, exposed by the cut of her dress. If he lets his mind wander, play around with the what-ifs, he’s pulling her close and telling her that it’s a line she can cross if she wants, if she wants him. She answers by wrapping her arm around his neck and pulling him down, her mouth slanting hungrily against his, her other hand tugging clumsily at his clothing—

_Fucking hell._

There are worse things in life than wanting the woman you’re being paid to marry.

He can’t think of a single one.

**Author's Note:**

> My sincere apologies!!!


End file.
